hereternalsins

[hereternalsins]

I will not have you without the darkness that hides within you.

I will not let you have me without the madness that makes me.

If our demons cannot dance, neither can we.

Nikita Gill

[hereternalsins]

What a terrible feeling to love someone and not be able to help them.

Jennifer Niven, All The Bright Places

[hereternalsins]

Nobody has ever measured, not even the poets, how much the heart can hold.

Zelda Fitzgerald

[hereternalsins]

I'm afraid to tell you where it hurts. What if you see me as a monster-or worse, unrepairable?

- love elizabeth s.

[hereternalsins]

No one ever tells you that bravery feels like fear.

- Mary Kate Teske

[hereternalsins]

When a crow takes a bite out of my flesh.

-rose ( herdivinemuse via instagram)

They say, there is a certain kind of pleasure that exists in pain. But I never understood until, when I was the one on the receiving end of my fate. That day, I watched a crow descend from its world just for me. Its feathers caught the morning light like the shards of midnight, its beak reminding me of an ancient tool made of hollow bones I had seen in a museum a while ago.

I have offered myself to that majestic presence, curious about what this world would take from me if I stayed remained still. The crow watched me closely, its eyes full of mathematical curiosity, calculating the difference it could make between the flesh that breathed and the flesh that didn't.

When It landed on my chest, the part where my heart resides, I wasn't as calm as I pretended to be. The weight of it was surprising, as if it was carried the stories and hollow bones of my ancestors it had witnessed.

I remember the bite, when it came, was not vicious or cruel. It was simply honest like it has taken something that should've belonged to it in the first place. It was honest, in the way nature and its necessity are.

I felt my skin tear beneath its presence, and in that moment, i understood something about boundaries. and how we are just a part of this universe waiting to be redistributed. The blood welled up, it was not shocking or horrible. It was simply red. The crow stepped back watching the marvel it had created in full glory, In those eyes, I saw myself not as a victim or a sacrifice but as a willing participant in this ritual, a ritual of giving and taking.

When it flew away, I was less than I had been and yet somehow more. This universe had taken a piece of me and reminding me again how we are all here borrowing something from each other, sometimes willingly, other times, desperately, drowning in this endless cycle of hunger and gift.

[hereternalsins]

When a crow takes a bite out of my flesh.

-rose ( herdivinemuse via instagram)

They say, there is a certain kind of pleasure that exists in pain. But I never understood until, when I was the one on the receiving end of my fate. That day, I watched a crow descend from its world just for me. Its feathers caught the morning light like the shards of midnight, its beak reminding me of an ancient tool made of hollow bones I had seen in a museum a while ago.

I have offered myself to that majestic presence, curious about what this world would take from me if I stayed remained still. The crow watched me closely, its eyes full of mathematical curiosity, calculating the difference it could make between the flesh that breathed and the flesh that didn't.

When It landed on my chest, the part where my heart resides, I wasn't as calm as I pretended to be. The weight of it was surprising, as if it was carried the stories and hollow bones of my ancestors it had witnessed.

I remember the bite, when it came, was not vicious or cruel. It was simply honest like it has taken something that should've belonged to it in the first place. It was honest, in the way nature and its necessity are.

I felt my skin tear beneath its presence, and in that moment, i understood something about boundaries. and how we are just a part of this universe waiting to be redistributed. The blood welled up, it was not shocking or horrible. It was simply red. The crow stepped back watching the marvel it had created in full glory, In those eyes, I saw myself not as a victim or a sacrifice but as a willing participant in this ritual, a ritual of giving and taking.

When it flew away, I was less than I had been and yet somehow more. This universe had taken a piece of me and reminding me again how we are all here borrowing something from each other, sometimes willingly, other times, desperately, drowning in this endless cycle of hunger and gift.

[hereternalsins]

One day, I won't love you anymore.

- rose ( herdivinemuse via instagram)

Five years of memories. Two years of silence. And now, three months of trying to rebuild what was broken, only to find that some cracks run deeper than time can heal.

She watches him across their favorite café—the same one where they used to spend Sunday mornings years ago. His coffee order hasn't changed: black, no sugar. But something else has. The way he holds himself, perhaps, or the careful distance in his eyes even when he smiles.

"Do you know?" she begins, her fingers tracing the rim of her cup. "In these five years, you've always been perfect and irreplaceable in my heart. But if we continue like this, I feel that... one day, I won't love you anymore."

The words hang between them like frost on a window pane—beautiful in their honesty, terrible in their implications. She watches them land, sees him flinch slightly, the way he always does when truth cuts too close to bone.

They'd thought it would be easier the second time around. After all, they knew each other's stories, could map each other's scars. The muscle memory of loving each other remained intact through those two years apart—the way he still reaches to brush her hair back when she's tired, how she automatically orders extra pickles for his burgers.

But with the familiar rhythms came the old ghosts. His tendency to retreat into silence when troubled. Her habit of expecting him to read her mind. The same misunderstandings that drove them apart the first time now hover at the edges of their reconciliation, waiting to reclaim their territory.

They'd spent those two years apart growing, changing, becoming better versions of themselves. She'd learned to voice her needs instead of hoping they'd be noticed. He'd worked on expressing his emotions instead of bottling them up. But somehow, together, they keep slipping back into their old roles—like actors who know their lines too well to play them differently.

"I still find your coffee cups in my apartment," he says quietly. "From before. I never could bring myself to throw them away."

She nods, understanding the weight of small things kept. She too has a box of memories she couldn't discard—movie tickets, dried flowers, photographs where their smiles still held certainty.

"Maybe that's our problem," she replies. "We're trying to fit new people into an old story."

The truth is, loving him has never been the problem. It's the easiest thing she's ever done, as natural as breathing. But loving someone and being able to build a life with them are different things. The past two years taught her that. They both learned it, separately, in their own ways.

"I don't want to lose you again," he says, reaching across the table. His fingers stop just short of hers, a gesture that encompasses everything wrong with their situation—always almost touching, almost understanding, almost getting it right.

"We're not the same people who fell in love five years ago," she tells him. "And we're not the same people who broke up two years ago either. Maybe we need to stop trying to be."

The afternoon light slants through the café windows, casting long shadows across their table. Outside, the city moves in its endless rhythm, indifferent to the small apocalypse happening over cooling coffee cups.

"Then who are we?" he asks, and there's something like hope in his voice—fragile but present.

She looks at him, really looks at him, seeing both the man she fell in love with and the stranger he's become. "Maybe that's what we need to find out," she says. "Not who we were, or who we think we should be, but who we are now."

The silence that follows feels different from their usual ones—not heavy with unspoken words, but open, waiting. Like a blank page rather than a closed book.

"I meant what I said," she continues softly. "You've been perfect and irreplaceable in my heart. But perfect isn't what I need anymore. I need real. I need now. I need us to stop haunting each other with who we used to be."

He nods slowly, and for the first time in months, his smile reaches his eyes. "Then maybe we should start over," he suggests. "Not from five years ago, or from two years ago, but from right here."

She feels something shift in her chest—not the familiar ache of old love, but something newer, something that tastes like possibility. "Hi," she says, extending her hand across the table. "I'm still learning who I am. Would you like to figure it out together?"

This time, when he reaches for her hand, he doesn't stop short.

[hereternalsins]

How do you move on when you know you've held perfection in your hands?

-rose (herdivinemuse via instagram)

The photographs still sit in their frames, mocking me with memories of warmer days - your smile caught in perfect afternoon light, our intertwined hands, the way you'd throw your head back when you laughed.

Did we know then? Could we sense the future that was to come? I replay our moments together like a worn-out film, searching for the first crack, the initial misstep that led us here. But love doesn't always end with a thunderclap. Sometimes it's more like autumn - a gradual cooling, leaves falling one by one until you wake up one day to find the branches bare.

The coffee shop where we first met still stands on the corner of that street. I take the long way around now, but sometimes, on particularly weak days, I find myself drawing closer, as if pulled by some invisible thread. Through the window, I can see our table - the one by the window where you first told me your dreams. Do strangers sit there now, making their own memories, unknowing of the ghosts they share space with?

The worst part isn't the loneliness - though God knows that cuts deep enough. It's the certainty that what we had was real. There's no comfort in thinking it was all a mistake or a youthful delusion. No, what we had was love in its purest form, bright and true as starlight. And somehow that makes its absence harder to bear. How do you move on when you know you've held perfection in your hands, only to watch it slip away like water through your fingers?

They say time heals all wounds, but they never tell you about the scars - how they stretch and ache on cold nights, how they remind you of what once was. Every smile feels like a betrayal, every laugh a small act of treachery against what we were.

Sometimes I wonder if you feel it too - this phantom limb pain of missing someone who used to be as natural as breathing. Do you also catch yourself turning to share a joke with someone who isn't there? Do you still have that reflex to call me first with good news, only to remember halfway through dialing that those privileges have been revoked?

It must have been love. That's the thought that haunts me most in the small hours of the morning when sleep eludes me. It must have been love - because nothing else could leave such beautiful wreckage in its wake.

[hereternalsins]

They say nothing lasts forever

but

they're just scared it will last longer than they can love it.

Ocean Vuong

[hereternalsins]

Mom: Try it. You like grapes.

Ri-na: That's not true.

Mom: Ofcourse you do. You've always loved grapes.

Ri-na: No. I don't. I don't like them. I've told you so many times that I don't like grapes? Why do you keep doing this, Mom? I've lost myself. I've never once had a chance to be myself. Just who am I? I did everything you told me to my whole life. I went along with the clothes, the friends you picked out for me. I even married the man you told me to marry. I held it in, telling myself that I owed this privileged life to you. That if I did as you said... I'd be the envy of all, that I'd be happy. So tell me, Mom. Why do I keep hurting? Why am I so unhappy?

[hereternalsins]

January

Ama Bolton

the god of good intentions of clean sheets frozen on the line of lambs born in a blizzard

January the gatekeeper eyes in the back of his head black bread in his knapsack

January the cold-caller talks of gold and frankincense gets away with murder

[hereternalsins]

[hereternalsins]

[hereternalsins]

[hereternalsins]

January pitches her voice over the noise:

last year's ghosts are dead, that's reason enough to celebrate.

Angelea Lowes

[hereternalsins]

You are shaking fists & trembling teeth.

I know:

you did not mean to be cruel.

That does not mean you were kind.

What is left here?

Only the quivering of the trees, only the rippling of the lake.

Head in lap, check. Sorry, check.

I won't do it again, check, check, check.

Sometimes, I think you forget.

I am not God. I do not forgive.

- Venetta Octavia, "The Burning", published in The Dinner Table Review